


Hiraeth

by Erandir



Series: Eldarion Surana [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Introspection, Lothering, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 09:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12408198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erandir/pseuds/Erandir
Summary: Hiraeth: “n. A homesickness for a home to which you can never return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past”





	Hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> This series is turning into nothing but writing and character exercises, but I hope you still enjoy it.

Lothering.

He knew the name. He recognized the Chantry hall. Templars still stood guard at the doors, stared down at him through the slits in their helmets, and Eldarion could not help how he cowered under that gaze.

He remembered very little from his life before the Circle, memories faded by time and active suppression. The trauma of his parting.

He couldn’t recall where his family might live, if they had remained in the village at all following the tragedy he caused. But the landscape here was familiar in a way he could not accurately describe. Like remembering a dream. The moments of his life when he had been happy.

Eldarion had more memories of the inside of his family home than he had of Lothering village. A single-room cabin on the edge of town where he had spent the majority of his days either too ill to get out of bed or playing quietly on the floor before the hearth with toys made of twigs, straw, and bits of rag.

Alone. Always alone.

But he had never minded. He had barely known anything else. The times he was well enough to go outside were like stepping into an unknown world full of mystery and wonder. In the early morning, after his parents had gone off to the farm where they worked, he could risk slipping out to play.

When his mother brought him to Chantry services he saw children playing in the square. Once he’d asked to join them.

“No, Eldarion.” In his memory his mother’s voice was clear - both patient and annoyed by his endless questioning - but he could not recall her face. “Look how roughly they’re playing. What if you got hurt? You know how careful we need to be so you don’t get sick.”

He never had the courage to ask again.

The Chantry was the only part of the village he recalled clearly. Back then it had been like a haven to him, on the rare occasions he was allowed into town with his mother and father. The only place he wasn’t alone. The women there were kind and never said bad names like the farmers his parents worked for. They taught him to write his name, told him stories about the Maker and Andraste.

They taught him that magic was dangerous. A truth he later learned all too well.

Once, this place had been the one spot of color in his otherwise monochrome life. Now he could barely stand to look at the building. The thought of stepping inside made his heart race, filled his ears with remembered words. His mother’s voice, screaming, choked with rage and grief, her hand on his arm so tight it hurt. “This child his a curse I never should have born. Take him. Take him! I will not have this demon in my house again!”

Somehow he managed to step past the templar at the door and into the Chantry hall without shaking to pieces. He wanted to hide behind Alistair, to curl up in a dark corner, to run screaming for the hills. Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere but here.

Did anyone here still remember him? Remember what he had done? The tiny body on a pyre, his mother’s screaming - demon, murderer, mage. Even the kind women in the Chantry looked at him with fear in their eyes after that. There was fear in their eyes now for a different reason, but it was all too familiar.

He told no one his name. Would not give them even more cause to fear by dredging up old hurts. If the Revered Mother knew the Grey Warden offering his aid was Eldarion Surana, the cursed child she’d sent away so many years ago, she may not accept him, or any of his companions.

It would only make things worse.

But for all his desire to help, a lead weight settled in his stomach, a cold dread down his spine, lodging there unshakable so long as that Chantry hall was within sight.

Soon it would all be gone. The darkspawn horde nipped at their heels, only a few days behind at best, and it would destroy all in its path.

Lothering would be gone. A home he could barely remember, and certainly not fondly, and yet Eldarion felt the loss as they put the village behind them - their group now larger by half - fleeing because there was nothing else to be done.

Could he have done more to help the people here? Would they all make it out before the darkspawn arrived?

There was nothing five people and a dog could do. Still he felt guilt. Guilt for abandoning a town that had abandoned him half a lifetime ago.

There was nothing five people and a dog could do. Not without allies. So they put Lothering behind them, a necessary casualty, and continued onward. North, toward Lake Calenhad, toward the Circle of Magi.


End file.
